Diminished Profitability and Welfare Decline (Reflections on the Irreformability of Capitalism in the 1990s)

However, today’s austerity is futile unless society can be persuaded that it is paving the way for tomorrow’s prosperity.1 As the promised economic prosperity fails to eventuate, liberal ideologies meet with dimin­ ishing public acceptance. Conservative parties, after a period in office - lengthy in the case of Britain and Italy, shorter in for example France or Greece — have accordingly lost elections to center-left parties.